Between Here and the Horizon(26)

While my brain was thinking these ridiculous thoughts, Ronan was vanishing, disappearing little by little, the shadows eating him, swallowing him, until finally he was gone.

The spell was broken.

I bolted from the study like a shot.

My feet hammered up the stairs; it seemed as though I made enough racket to wake up the children and half of the island, but when I raced along the hallway and dashed into my room, slamming the door closed behind me, I didn’t hear another soul stirring in the house. All I could hear was my own labored breathing, and the sound of thunder rumbling off in the distance.

“Jesus.” I leaned my back against the door, swallowing hard. Get yourself together, Lang. Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? It couldn’t have been him. It wasn’t.

It took a long time to convince myself of this. I paced my room for fifteen minutes, shaking my head, mind racing. It had been a long day. An awful, heartbreaking day. There was no way Ronan had killed himself, only to come back as a ghost, though. No way in hell. The mind was a powerful thing, and after the day I’d had it was understandable that I would be overly sensitive. Imagining things, seeing things that weren’t there.

I was still too freaked to shower. I got changed and climbed into bed with my laptop instead, jumping every time the house creaked or the branches of the trees outside the window shook, casting long shadows on the walls inside my room. Flights. I needed to book my flight home. The sooner I got back to California and away from this god-forsaken place, the better.

I opened up my web browser and had to stop myself from booking the earliest flight available. It would be really crappy of me to leave before the CPS worker came and collected Amie and Connor. I didn’t even have anywhere to leave them. Waiting until everything was squared away with them was the right thing to do, even if the prospect of postponing my flight from the island for a few extra hours was enough to make me break out in hives.

Seven thirty in the evening. The flight I booked from Knox County was late enough that I’d have enough time to see the children settled, get my ass across to the mainland, and travel back into the city. I might even have enough time to grab a glass of wine or two in the airport bar—I’d never needed a drink more in my life than I did now. Not even when I found Will in bed with my best friend.

I’d like to say that I fell asleep right away, reassured that I was going to be back on a plane in less than twenty-four hours, winging my way home to my relatively normal life in California, far from the windswept coastline of Causeway Island and the crazy, terrible thing that had happened here. I didn’t, though. I lay in bed with the covers pulled up tight underneath my chin, and I stared at the ceiling, chewing on my lip, scared and feeling like a pretty shitty human being.





CHAPTER NINE





Unacceptable Circumstances





“Feelya. Feelya, wake up. There’s a man outside.” A tiny hand poked and prodded at my face, patting over my cheeks and forehead. I woke slowly, sluggishly, trying to comprehend my surroundings. It took a second for everything to rush at me—the memory of yesterday and everything that occurred. Amie was standing by my bed, hair snarled into a dark, tangled bird’s nest. She had lines on her cheek from her pillow, but other than that she looked like she might have been awake for hours. Her pale blue eyes were bright and alert, crinkled at the corners, and her mouth was drawn into an impish smile. “You were snoring. Really loud,” she informed me in a whisper.

“Did you say there was a man outside?” I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to shake the fog from my brain.

Amie nodded. “He’s very skinny. He looks like he’s very hungry, probably.”

A very skinny man outside? Could only be Linneman. I supposed he did have a kind of hungry look about him. “Did you let him inside?” I asked.

“No. Daddy said not to.”

“Daddy?”

Amie nodded again. “Yes. He always says not to answer the door to anybody.”

“Ah, okay. Yes, that’s very smart. He’s right. You shouldn’t.” I threw back the covers, now able to hear the polite but insistent rapping on the front door downstairs. The clock on the bedside table read eight forty-five. Jesus, how had I slept so long? Kids get up so early; I should have been out of bed and making them breakfast two hours ago. Typical that I couldn’t sleep all night and then I fall face first into unconsciousness around dawn, just in time to make myself late for everything.

Downstairs, Linneman was standing at the front door, small wisps of his gray hair blowing across his face as the wind howled across the huge front lawn. He gave me a tight-lipped smile through the glass as I hurried to the door, unlocked and opened it.

“Morning, Miss Lang. I was beginning to worry that you’d already left. May I?” He gestured past me into the hallway. “It’s rather cold out here, and I’ve been standing here for some time.”

“Oh, god, of course. Of course. I’m sorry, I—” I gave up trying to formulate an excuse for the length of time it took me to come to the door. My pajamas and my bedhead were explanation enough. Linneman stalked into the hallway, swinging the same battered leather briefcase at his side that he’d had with him yesterday. His clothing was as official and proper as it had been yesterday, too—dark gray suit this time, that looked like it was in actual fact some kind of tweed, shot through with a fine blue thread, and a severely pressed white button-down, finished off with a blue tie that had been tied so high and tight that it looked like it was strangling him.